While I like the site overall, the page load times are a massive issue for me with many taking a minute or longer to load, even though page tests at GTMetrix claim a 21s load time.

It looks like your site uses Social Engine 4 from the page code...

Have you tried using a page caching plugin? I found this one:

https://www.socialengine.com/marketplace/app/page-cache-plugin

I couldn't really narrow down the page delay but it's probably all the uncached PHP, JS and CSS that is dynamically loaded into the page every time.

If it's not something you've already tried, it might be worth a punt? Seems like decent feedback from users of the plugin :)

Hi Lisa, we do already use a Redis caching server but our main page is pretty big so it can take a while to load. However, a whole minute sounds excessive. It should take about 20 seconds at the most. I just timed it here and it took 13 seconds. That is the largest page too so every other page in the site should load faster (considerably faster).

To achieve quicker load times we would probably have to upgrade to a dedicated sever, which we simply cannot afford. We only have a paltry income from a few banner ads and I find myself constantly footing the bill for developers working on the site from my own pocket. Donations are welcome but very rare. It’s a very poor business model.

Best, Katie